


Another Time

by another_Hero



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Asexual Patrick Brewer, M/M, Post-Episode: s04e02 Pregnancy Test, night at stevie's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2020-12-31 19:11:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21150776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/another_Hero/pseuds/another_Hero
Summary: He was ready—he was pretty sure he was ready—for whatever was going to happen tonight. But he was pretty new to the whole being-gay thing, at least as a feeling he got to act on. This would help him adjust. David—whose hands were just beginning to divide Patrick’s sweater from his waistband—would help him adjust.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> if you are surprised to find me, of all people, writing a night at Stevie's, well, it's exactly the night you'd expect from me
> 
> this contains some ace 101 content. if you, like me, are tired of your ace content being ace 101 content and would prefer something like what nilolay less than twelve hours ago called “breezily ace,” I would be delighted for you to read [this one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15664992/chapters/36389088) of mine, which is not SC but IS about a ship that could very reasonably be considered a qpr in its canon form. (it isn’t full of ace language, but it more importantly isn’t full of ace angst and has only one, humorous, instance of ace word-defining.)
> 
> I haven't even reread this before posting bc I have to go to work and I mostly just wanted to be done with it lol

David’s lips were on his, David’s neck was in his hand, Patrick had evaded any discussion of the past, and—and he was still a little nervous. There were the butterflies, from the kissing David, which he did want to do at literally all times, but also. He’d been _enjoying_ what they’d done so far, making out in the back of the store with David’s hands ghosting over his back or scratching down it, pressing together mostly-dressed in one of their not-at-all-private beds, but he wasn’t feeling the urgency that David seemed to. He was ready—he was pretty sure he was ready—for whatever was going to happen tonight. But he was pretty new to the whole being-gay thing, at least as a feeling he got to act on. This would help him adjust. David—whose hands were just beginning to divide Patrick’s sweater from his waistband—would help him adjust.

Patrick moved his mouth down to David’s neck, with a quick stopover at his jaw, and heard an appreciative _mm_ in his ear. David was so gloriously reactive. Patrick never worried that he was going about this the wrong way, or doing a bad job. He bit down.

David’s gasp turned into a breathy “Can I—” and he was tugging on the bottom of Patrick’s sweater.

“Yeah,” Patrick said, and pulled back for space, and slid backward onto the bed, and pulled his sleeves loose. “Do yours too?” There were probably special ways of touching David’s clothes, and Patrick watched avidly: he wanted to know them. He would be able to do it the next time: the gentle sliding, an ordinary folding-up of the shirt, and then David tossed it on the floor and looked back at him, bright-eyed and grinning, and crawled forward over his body. Patrick hadn’t had a lot of happy, thrilled, _delighted_ sex, and he tried to match David, despite the feeling of a distance he wasn't sure he wanted to cross.

He leaned back in, but—“What do you want?” David murmured when Patrick’s mouth had almost met his.

There was pleasure in the surprise, but he still worried about the answer. “Um,” said Patrick. He shook his head. “I want to touch you.” He leaned again, got a hand on David’s back, got his mouth on David’s shoulder, and kissed it, open-mouthed. He wanted to touch him _constantly_, more closely than was probably possible, and the way David was sitting, there would be no way to press his chest up into David’s. There was an obvious way of solving that—he lay back.

David lay down over him, their legs interleaved, holding most of his weight on his elbows. “Hey,” Patrick said and pulled on one. But David hesitated, and he let go, and he pressed up for a kiss instead. “Um,” he said after a minute, because being shirtless with pants on made him feel kind of ridiculous, like a guy on a romance novel but way less jacked—“can we—pants?” But he pulled David back over him after, even got one of David’s hands out from under him and into Patrick’s hair, and this here, the mouth-to-toe contact, the languid kissing, Patrick would have lived like this. He’d never known it was possible to want something so badly while you had it.

The problem was, this wasn’t really what they were here for. It didn’t bother him at first—they’d get there. They had all night! This would build up something in them, and soon, they’d want to—but it just continued, this warm and increasingly worrisome makeout, until Patrick was too tense and pulled David’s head back just a little.

It took David’s eyes a moment to focus on Patrick, which was good, gratifying, a sign of success. But he managed it, and he said, “Hey,” and he bit Patrick’s lip for a second like he just wasn’t ready to let go yet, which was _way_ too much—Patrick could hardly believe he hadn’t just dissolved. “What?” said David.

“Aren’t we supposed to—”

David raised his eyebrows twice, suggestively. “Supposed to?”

Patrick didn’t say anything else; David knew what he meant.

“Patrick Brewer, are you worried about getting a bad grade at sex?” David pecked at the side of his mouth. “Do you think we’re going to _get in trouble?_ Is somebody going to make us write _lines?_”

“Shut up,” Patrick mumbled, bending up to kiss him again, sinking his hand into the thick hair on the exposed bit of David’s chest. “We can kiss anytime, though.”

“Okay, _very_ confused about why _that’s_ a problem,” said David, who was still grinning and seemed totally unconcerned. “Also,” and he said it in the quietest voice, like a secret, “Nobody has walked in on us since we—well. Since we got the place to ourselves. But if you _want_ to do something else—”

Patrick wasn’t sure he did; that was exactly the problem. “Um,” he said, “what do _you_ want?”

David shook his head, but he didn’t push away. “It’s already done,” he said. “I want to be alone with you.” He bit Patrick’s jaw. “I mean, I wouldn’t say _no_ to sucking you off, but it doesn’t really seem like that’s what you want right now?”

_What if I never want it?_ felt dangerously close to spilling out of Patrick’s mouth—if he didn’t want it with _David_, something so _basic_, it seemed suddenly possible that he just couldn’t. But _never_ and _someday_ were big concepts to lay on a skittish business partner he hadn’t even been kissing for a month. “That’s okay with you?” he asked instead.

David grimaced, and for a moment Patrick was worried, and he said “Okay, um,” and it wasn’t promising, but what he said after that was, “I know we’re not talking about the past, but—ugh, _this_ is a downer, whatever, you probably know already, I’ve said yes to a lot of sex I didn’t want to have?” He shook his head, looking pained, and Patrick ran a firm hand up his back, which seemed completely inadequate. But then David looked directly, fiercely at him. “Don’t do that for me.” He rolled off Patrick to the side, tugging Patrick’s arm so they were still facing. “Sorry I killed the mood.”

“No,” Patrick said immediately, and remembered that you were supposed to _respond_ to that kind of statement, “no, thank you for telling me. And—” He wanted to say _I won’t_, to promise David what he asked, but _what if I never want it?_ Then: “But that goes for you, too, right? Don’t say yes unless you want to?” David nodded a little. “Seriously. Promise?”

David nodded more firmly this time, but then he leaned in to start the kissing again, and Patrick certainly wasn’t trying to talk him out of _that_.

Patrick woke up early and worrying: _What if I never want it? What if I never want it?_ He turned onto his side to face David, who had one leg stretched over his but otherwise slept compactly, like a large man accustomed to a twin bed. He reached out and let his fingers slide in where David’s solid, still-here side met sheets. He should go back to sleep, but David—David would want to have some kind of sex, sometime, and maybe he should—do something. He could plan it now, he could be prepared by the time David woke up, but David had told him not to do that, but it was one thing not to want Patrick to do that _now_ and another thing not to want it _ever_, and maybe Patrick _would_ change his mind, and if he didn’t was this just internalized homophobia, and how the fuck would you get over that, and did that even make any _sense_ if he wanted David this _much_, and what if he never _did_ want it, was there something wrong with him, like a broken bit in his brain, and could he fix it, would anyone love him, was there a part of love that he’d never get to feel—“Oh my God, what are you worrying about?” David sounded still-half-asleep, which he should be: it wasn’t even light outside, and David’s aversion to mornings was well-established. Patrick had been trying not to move around too much, but clearly he’d failed.

“Hey,” Patrick said softly. “Go back to sleep.”

“_You_ go back to sleep. Actually don’t. I’m awake now. What is it?”

Patrick’s whole body wanted to flee, but if you couldn’t say these things at four in the morning—“What if I never want it?”

It took David a second to catch up. “Like, if you’re asexual, or if you have a specific aversion to blowjobs?”

“Um, the first one, probably? I don’t know what it is?”

“It’s when you—” David yawned hugely, wide-mouthed like a cat, and Patrick was not supposed to feel this much about him so soon. “When you don’t get sexually attracted to people.”

“Um?”

“All right, first of all?” David rolled onto his side. “You do not have to resolve this entire sexuality crisis at four in the morning, and second of all, I will be coming in late to the store today, on account of the sleep I will need to catch up on.” He didn’t sound upset. He sounded like he knew Patrick wouldn’t resist, which sort of made him want to, but—“So if thinking about and being with other people doesn’t make you horny, like, about those people? Ever? That’s asexual.”

“Okay, so if I’m asexual, what do I _do_?”

David raised an eyebrow. “Do?”

“I mean, like—” Patrick was about to be so presumptuous, but then, he and David had a whole store together— “Don’t you want those things?”

“Oh.” David slid closer, reached out and rubbed his side. “Me, personally? I, um, I like sex, but mostly for what—goes along with it? What we did last night was great for me. And if, in the future—” Patrick’s breath caught at him even acknowledging the _concept_ of future, and it couldn’t be good to rest too many of his hopes on what David had to say at four in the morning, and he tried to breathe— “if I feel like something’s—lacking—we can talk about it then.” David kissed his forehead, which might have been weirdly maternal but still made Patrick’s eyes prickle at the corners. “Some other guy? Depends on who you get.” He slid his hand around to Patrick’s back and pulled his fingers together, then spread them out, and Patrick wondered whether he should say he wasn’t thinking of other guys, but it was a little early for that kind of reassurance, true as it was.

“But how can you just—”

“Okay,” said David, like he was trying to figure something out. “You don’t owe me sex. We can agree about that, right? Nobody owes anybody sex, so you don’t owe me sex?”

Patrick wasn’t sure he was _convinced_, but the principle was sound. He nodded.

“So getting what I need is—ultimately my responsibility.”

“Okay, but if you’re _important_ to me—” It wasn’t fair to David to be frustrated, but—

“Then you’ll have to trust me,” David said. “To make sure I’m getting what I need, and to tell you if I’m not.”

“Okay, but will you do that, though?” It was easier to ask than _what if we can’t make it work?_

“I can try,” David said, so softly, because this was new to both of them.

He kissed David gently, and then he clearly should have gone back to sleep, but—“Can I still be gay? Or queer? Because I’m definitely—both of those things.”

David laughed, and it split open the night. He stopped as suddenly as he’d started. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was inappropriate.”

“Oh, no, totally legitimate. I’ve been wanting to laugh at me since I woke up.”

“I’m sorry, I was just—picturing—like, you walking up to the big door where they let in the gays—”

This wasn’t making a lot of sense to Patrick; he assumed David would clarify in a moment.

“There’s not, like, a committee,” he said.

Now Patrick chuckled too. “I present as evidence,” he said, and he looked behind David to see how near the edge of the bed he was, then pushed him back and rolled on top of him and kissed and kissed.

“You want to go to sleep?” Patrick asked a little while later.

“I’m wide awake,” said David breathlessly, though Patrick figured him for the kind of guy who was god at sleeping. He pulled away a moment later to say, “Um, I notice that you are also—” he rolled his hips— “wide awake.”

“Mm,” said Patrick. “This feels good.” He nipped at David’s ear.

“Do you want to, ah, do anything about that?”

It didn’t feel urgent, but he did, a little. But that would bring pressure, and this now, him and David and no such expectations and a little bit of hope in the future, felt _right_. “Another time?”

“Another time.”

Patrick sunk his hand into David’s hair and slowed down. Climbed off and tucked in beside him with a bite to his jaw. It was five in the morning. If they could bear to let go, they had time for a little more sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, a fair number of people had strong and personal reactions to this fic and getting to see an ace story, which I then felt kind of bad about because a brief thought experiment about a character who is quite possibly a-spec but almost certainly not asexual in canon doesn't really count as an ace story, so I wrote three random-ass ace stories that all employ everyone's favorite fic trope, FAKE DATING (one of them involves ONLY ONE BED, which is shared by two people who have been close friends for a long time and think nothing of sharing it). You can find them [here](https://acefakedating.home.blog/) if you want to read them. (If you don't, that's fine; I'll probably forget they exist in about ten minutes unless anybody yells at me about them. They're really just here in case anybody wants them.)
> 
> It's probably bad ao3 form to post a tiny bonus chapter whose primary purpose is to advertise something else you've written; it feels like bad ao3 form to me. But I'm not looking for feedback on those stories or the kind of shared engagement that we have with fic (unless you want to talk about them, in which case that's fine, I'm fairly able to talk to people about their ace feelings). I'm just putting them here in hopes that if any of you who wanted to see more ace stories find that you want to see *these specific* ace stories (which are not about David Rose and Patrick Brewer but are about people who are legitimately ace and/or aro), you might have a chance of finding them.

The store was empty when David arrived at about 11:15, looking totally put-together, his hair tidy. Patrick had the urge to put his hand in it again, but it wasn't hard to resist. He wasn't quite able to pull himself out from around the counter, but David came to him anyway, smiling beatifically, and set his hands on Patrick's waist. "Good morning," he said softly.

Patrick made a show of pulling out his phone and looking at it. "Still is," he said. Then, because he had to know, and because David of all people wouldn't be in a position to judge him for asking--David would have to remember the morning after their first kiss as well as he did--"Regrets?"

David's whole face softened until Patrick felt almost guilty for bringing it up. "No," he murmured, brushing his thumbs over Patrick's ribs. "No regrets." He shifted his hands to Patrick's back, and Patrick, whose arms weren't usually on top during a hug, felt a little awkward reaching his arms around David's shoulders. His own hold felt less firm than he was used to, but David's enveloped him. They stood there until the bell rang, so long Patrick really believed there would be time--to learn what he wanted, what David wanted, how they might manage to be together. David pulled away to greet the customer, but he brushed a hand down Patrick's shoulder, still nearly holding on, as he said, "Welcome to Rose Apothecary."

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to leupagus and the way she talked about [her fic last night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21142343), along with whoever prompted it, for making me think bigger about the ways Patrick could be gay.
> 
> thanks to whetherwoman, nilolay, Distractivate, and the Rosebudd at large for encouragement and discussion. 
> 
> a note on “broken”: part of what definitely prompted this fic is that a lot of fics that have talked about Patrick coming to terms with his asexuality have started with him thinking he’s broken or that something is wrong with him bc he’s not into sex, and then that’s beautifully resolved when it turns out he’s Gay, Actually. This is a real and true thing, and I’m not mad at anybody who writes fic where that happens, but some people…don’t turn out to be Gay, Actually, they’re just not into sex, and a lot of those people do for sure worry that there’s something wrong with them! anyway, I didn’t want this fic to be full of that, but I also _did_ want it to come up in the angsty bits to connect to those other stories. if you’re ace, sex-neutral/averse, etc, I absolutely do not think that’s something wrong, I think you’re great. 
> 
> a note on desexualizing and asexuality: desexualizing queer people is a Happens a Lot thing and a harmful thing, though cis white guys don’t necessarily bear the worst of it. *asexuals* get accused frequently of desexualizing…ourselves? people like that motherfucker dan savage have publicly held the stance that asexuality is just, like, a holding pen for people who aren’t able or willing to come out “properly” (i.e. as gay) (come out or don’t on your own time, kids). desexualizing a person or group is about taming them and eliminating parts of them that make the person doing it uncomfortable. asexuality, like accepting yourself in any orientation, has the capacity to be honest and liberating and joyous, and to create newer and better possible futures.


End file.
